It was in Lyon in 1532 that Rabelais published
Pantagruel, the first volume of his mock-epic masterpiece.
No event in his previous life had suggested that this was the genre
in which he would establish his reputation, and his childhood and
adolescence also remain comparatively obscure. We know, however,
that he had spent several years pursuing a monastic vocation, later
abandoned, whereupon, having gained his first medical degree at
Montpellier, he settled temporarily in Lyon, working both in the
municipal hospital and in the printing industry. It was there that
he seems to have helped in the publication, also in 1532, of a
small comic text concerning the Gallic folk hero Gargantua,
entitled Les Grandes et inestimables …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

The Literary Encyclopedia is supplied without charge to higher education institutions in countries where per capita income is below the world average. If you are in a relatively wealthy country, reading The Literary Encyclopedia and recommending it to others helps us to afford these free supplies.